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Friday, November 29, 2013

Home Sewing - Cushions for our swing seat

When we bought our new house (a year ago now!) I knew I wanted to make a flat cushion and some throw cushions for this gorgeous swing seat that came with the property. The little old lady that owned the property before us knew what it was all about. She had this set up in the perfect spot in the yard for it. It gets direct sunlight in the morning when it's not too hot but by midmorning it's in deep shade which lasts all day. It's perfect really. We can eat breakfast out on this spot of a morning or I can read a book or take a nap here of an afternoon over the weekend.

So the story is I was planning to make the flat cushion out of this mustard chevron fabric but discovered it was not wide enough to cut one continuous flat piece from. So I thought I'd just have a seam down the middle but that seemed odd seeing as it fits 3 people on it at a time. So then I thought I'd make it look like a 3 seater but cutting 3 pieces of fabric and mitre-ing the chevrons to make it looks continuous from afar but intentional from close up.

The short story here is that my skills in matching up chevrons failed me and many a curse word was spoken before this cushion simply got discarded. For ages. I mean months.

Luckily fiance's mum is a seamstress and she was doing a big de stash recently which saw me acquiring not just dress fabrics but a whooooole lot of upholstery fabric - including some dreamy suede which I'm yet to dream up a project for.

Anyway back to the cushion. I chose this white fabric from the pile. I'm pretty sure it's curtain fabric seeing as it has the blockout stuff on the back but this meant it was perfectly thick and sturdy and easy under the needle. It was my first time sewing any kind of piping but I made the process easier by sewing my piping about half a centimetre from the internal cording so that once I put it in the fabric sandwich it would behave for me. Which really worked. So hooray!

And those pesky pieces of chevron that defied me got cut up into smaller pieces and made into small throw cushions. Take that! I won.

And now I have a really lovely and inviting spot to sit in my backyard.